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August 17, 2004
A recent column on flat-panel monitors prompted letters from a number of readers asking what they could do about type that appears too small on their displays. I wish there were a simple answer to this 20-year-old problem, but there isn't. There are, however, several tricks that can make inscrutable text a lot easier to read.
The basic problem is the stupid way computers determine type size. Windows and other operating systems interpret the font size you select as a fixed number of pixels, but the size of the pixels varies with screen size and resolution. Software generally assumes about 100 pixels per inch, but some monitors display double that -- cutting the height of type by 50%. Microsoft (MSFT ) promises that the next version of Windows, due in a couple of years, will match type size to what the display actually shows, but I'm not holding my breath.
The Windows Display control panel gives you a font-size option that seems to offer a solution. But changing this setting only affects icon labels, the size of menus, and other "system" text. It has no effect on word-processing documents, e-mail, or Web pages. Many programs provide their own adjustments, but there's no consistency in how they work. Here are tips for some popular Windows programs. (Macs (AAPL ) pose similar problems, and often the adjustments for various applications are similar to their Windows counterparts.)
It's easy to get a proper font display in Microsoft Word and Excel. Many people err by choosing a font size that looks good on the screen, but this is a mistake. Ten-point or 12-point type is standard for most printed documents, and anything big enough to look good on a screen may look awful on paper. The right way to control the size of displayed text is with the "zoom" setting found on the standard toolbar. Zoom can be set between 10% and 500% of normal, so you can choose a setting that is comfortable to read on any display without affecting the appearance of a printout.
THINGS GET UGLY FAST IN OTHER PROGRAMS. Outlook is a particular nightmare because the method for controlling the display of text varies, depending on whether you are composing or reading your mail. The former is fairly simple: Recent versions of Outlook use Word as an editor, and the zoom tool works just as it does in Word. The display of received mail depends on how the sender formatted it. If it was sent as "plain text," the size is determined by your setting for composing outgoing messages. The display of other messages depends on the fonts chosen by the sender. If the message was sent as "HTML" or "rich text," the View menu gives you some limited ability to enlarge or shrink the type. But the settings work only on messages that you double-clicked to open in their own windows, not those shown in the preview pane. The simpler Outlook Express is more tractable. The View menu gives a choice of five sizes for both reading and composing. Unlike Outlook, the choice works for all types of mail.
Internet Explorer and other browsers also have problems. In theory, you can pick from a range of sizes on the View menu. But because of the way many Web sites are designed, selecting a larger size may simply change the spacing between the lines -- or have no effect at all.
The next Windows release, code-named Longhorn, is supposed to fix the underlying difficulty. The software will sense the resolution of the display and scale fonts, icons, and other display elements so that they appear the proper size on any screen. But I don't expect to see Longhorn for at least two years. And it's not certain that the scaling feature will make the final cut or that it will work on any but the newest and most powerful computers.
So for the time being, we are left with a collection of application-specific tricks. They are a nuisance to learn, but the effort is worth the trouble. You eyes will thank you.
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